Just completed the game... what a let down.

[WereChicken]

Yeah, I cant help but feel that if the devs had spent more time fleshing out their kick-♥♥♥ scifi universe with magic and time travel rather than focusing on creating a crude and pretty offensive depiction of gay and bisexual people as being a bunch of schizophrenics who flip between acting angry/maudlin and horny teenagers we'd have had a classic game on our hands, instead it's just a waste of potential.

Also it's not exactly subtle having the only straight white male be the bad guy, and be pretty much a petulant man-child too.

Also the logs were an awful demonstration of why it should be show don't tell. Not to mention whoever wrote that dross doesn't seem to know what fascism actually is and it feels kind of like the "writer" was actually trying to make a straw man about how a meritocracy is really bad in practice, but lacked the ability to get their point across and instead it just felt like a really pathetic strawman.

Generally most of my critisms of this game can come in two forms:
1, extremely poor and heavy handed writing with all the subtlety, nuance and skill of a bag of dog turds being hurled at a passing truck

2, half ♥♥♥♥♥ game design. The game was just too short, there where too many bosses that where just reskins of an earlier boss, the difference between the time zones was barely there and for all the vastness the lore hinted at you were essentially stuck flipping between two rather boring time periods.
Also the weapon system, while pretty clever, didn't have anywhere near the amount of polish it needed as it just feels like a confusing mess.

Also it just feels pretentious having pictures of yourselves all over the game when the game itself is that barren.

[noisyturtle]

I'm not too far in but the game seems sexist in that all the protagonists are women and all the bad guys are men.

[WereChicken]

I'm just sad they tainted a game with blatant agenda driven writing and IT SHOWS!

It doesn't feel representative, in fact it feels down right insulting to the LGBTQ community as it's not even showing what those sort of relationships are like, but instead some ridiculous mess that makes zero logical sense. About the only LGBTQ couple that legitimately felt like an actual relationship with real people was the two queens

I've just found out they hired silverstring media to work on the writing so I guess I don't have to feel as guilty for hammering on about the truely pathetic writing.

I don't mind all the protagonists being women, or gay, or gay women, but I do object to it when it's blatantly done for agenda pushing and actually is detrimental to the game.

Like next time maybe they should have 1-2 LGBTQ couples and instead focus on making them actually feel like people instead of, for example, some horny idiot who when you hand him some chicken legs replies with something that's actually worse and less subtle than 'speaking of ♥♥♥♥, guess what I like....'

[tebok]

blah blah le epic gamer opinion. I'm a straight white guy and I didn't notice the characters were female or bisexual. Who cares. Literally only you.

[WereChicken]

Originally posted by tebok:

blah blah le epic gamer opinion. I'm a straight white guy and I didn't notice the characters were female or bisexual. Who cares. Literally only you.

Yeah, not my point, or even what I was saying. Keep trying to invalidate any opinion that isn't yours through insinuation rather than actually trying to make a point though, I'm sure that'll work ;)

[Metzelmax]

> a petulant man-child too

You speak from experience I see.

[WereChicken]

Originally posted by Metzelmax:

> a petulant man-child too

You speak from experience I see.

Yeah, because that reply screams maturity ;)

What's the matter kids, cant refute the points so you're going to just hurl some teary eyed insults at me and run away thinking you've made a devastating point?

The writing is absolute trash, the depictions of gay, bisexual and trans people is frankly belittling and insultingly heavy handed, not to mention the ridiculousness of having the entire cast, with only one exception (and a couple of unknowns), be LGBTQ with no explanation whatsoever, which further highlights how god awful the writing is as that could have been a valid world building point.

So do you lot actually have any valid defences of this games writing or will it be more weak insults?

[admiral1018]

This game is probably the best example of how NOT to do LGBT content in a video game. And don't get me wrong, I think the video game industry is long overdue for more inclusiveness when it comes to gender, race, and sexual orientation. But having a bunch of NPCs with no discernible personalities except their sexual orientations is not inclusion, it's tokenism.

The LGBT content is almost world-breaking, and it's so ridiculous at points that it seems like a parody someone would make who was intentionally mocking extreme university progressivism. Having a couple of LGBT/non-binary characters who are developed is fine, but having literally 100% of the main characters be LGBT actually calls into question things like how this universe could even repopulate itself enough to still be around. It also contrasts with the otherwise dark/serious nature of the plot (i.e. the fate of an entire planet is at stake) to have characters make juvenile jokes about "greasing his pole" or focus on their sexual orientation when everyone could be dead if the mission fails.

If you want to see a great example of LGBT inclusion, I'd recommend The Last of Us. Play Timespinner if you want a SotN clone and do your best to ignore the dialogue.

[WereChicken]

Exactly! The really sad part is that could have been a legitimate world building tool too.

As In, the society they came from considers LGBT people criminal/ disposable because they're dedicated to furthering and enhancing their species and view people who basically don't procreate to be lesser and thus we have the LGBT squad stranded in the middle of no-where because their commanders considered them expendable, sub-human cannon fodder. There, easy explanation that hammers home the point that their home government is a bunch of bastards and gives a good reason why all the characters in the town bit are the rainbow alliance, as opposed to it just being so because shut up homophobe!

Although that would have required someone actually competent at world building to come up with, which seems pretty far from the skills of whatever """""Writer"""""" came up this dross

[davidb11]

THe people complaining about this game already used all your arguments before and were wrong then.

Why do people constantly make up stuff about this game?
Just go back through the damn forum here and you'll see people spreading the same lies as you all are.

The game does not do anything offensive towards the LGBT community, and it is blatantly absurd to claim that. In fact, it's literally offensive to the LGBT community to claim that.

IT is so absurd to see so much hatred for this game at all.
Just for daring to have so many LGBT characters in it.

That's literally the only thing that this game has ever done.

It's so obvious it makes me sad.
I recently bought this and I will someday play it. But literally everyone who has said the same thing as you have been exposed as bad people.
So, why literally say the exact same thing as the bad people?!?

https://steamcommunity.com/app/368620/discussions/0/1734340257882740564/
Here's a thread that spreads lies and misinformation.
That's just one of like 5 different threads.

In those threads, your complaints are basically already used. 2 years ago.
Do you want me to link every single thread?

I'm not sure why you would ever say something that was already debated and proven wrong 2 years ago.

So much misinformation for this game and still now, even years later, it's being spread.

[WereChicken]

Mate you're literally accusing us of lying about what's actually right there in the game!

If they're such blatant lies why cant you easily refute them?

Maybe because you're full of it?

Seriously why is everyone trying to defend this game do so with insinuations, accusations and insults, rather than actually refuting the criticms with valid points?

Also just a quote from the page you posted which sums up people like you:

"It's not just "two lines" there are many more characters from LGBT in this game, and they go in-depth about their sexualities.

I really don't like how people are trying to shut down discussion by being dishonest about the game ("it's just two lines lol") or by pushing people into one bag by calling them "bigots"."

(Sorry currently on my phone and cant sort the quoting out properly, it's like the 4-5th one down)

[davidb11]

Alright. I apparently misunderstood you.
I apologize for that.

However, I don't see any reason to claim that the game's depiction is actually insulting to LGBT people.
That was something people said years ago, and it made no sense then.

[WereChicken]

Originally posted by davidb11:

Alright. I apparently misunderstood you.
I apologize for that.

However, I don't see any reason to claim that the game's depiction is actually insulting to LGBT people.
That was something people said years ago, and it made no sense then.

Because it's an unrealistic and one dimensional depiction. For most of them their sexuality is the only notable thing about them. Its tokenism designed to just pay lip service to representation without any real effort or thought.

The fact the majority of the cast are LGBTQ without explanation just hangs a lantern on how this was clearly an agenda driven decisio, which further takes you out of the story and undermine whatever message the writer was originally trying to portray. Not only that but shows a clear lack of effort on the writers part and shows how tokenistic their portrayal is. As I've said before that could have been a valid world building point.

[Derp]

I mean, it's not an agenda driven decision to have a cast of straight people, right? So why is it tokenistic because they happen to be lgbt? I cannot speak for you, but as someone who is bisexual I was just happy to see a wide range of lgbt characters in something that isn't porn or steven universe.

The main villains of the game aren't villainous because they're straight- they're villainous because one of them is a nazi (He almost directly quotes the 14 words) and the other treats groups of people as his property.

One of the two straight up bad guys in the game, the emperor, is a man of color who decides that genocide is fine if people don't want to follow his orders, and works with both demons and a scientist comparable to unit 731 (with the demons being of color in some cases).

There's like 3 characters who could be seen as stereotypes (lunais, the commander, and the princess) but they all have detailed motivations for why they act that way and their behavior is shared with characters who aren't lgbt (like the prince and vox)

Vox is a fascist in the sense that he shares their hatred towards the disabled and only cares about the welfare of certain members of a group of people that shrinks over time. Also, he nearly directly quotes nazi propoganda.

Most of the bosses are pretty unique- while there's no excuse for the princess and the traitor to be that similar though, the reasoning for both versions of the emperor (they're the same person) and vox (they come to embody the same mindsets) makes sense. While I think the game would have definitely been better without repeats, this is better than a lot of games in the genre (looking at you hollow knight)

Don't get me wrong, I have other problems with the story.

For example: why are the demons evil if they barely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ do anything and one of our familiars is a demon? Why can't the princess stop the soldiers in HER castle from fighting us? How are the members of an army so incompetent that one of them needs me to escort them against ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ rats (not a bad escort mission but story wise it's dumb)? Why don't we see a more drastic personality shift for those suffering from bleakness? Why does the princess straight up drop out of the game until the endings after you defeat her? Why is the main character so casual about massacring hundreds of soldiers in the past given what that could do to the present, and why doesn't she ever try diplomacy? Why are there three boss fights against orb users if they're specifically weakened by a lack of plasma when only one of them has anything at all to do with the substance? Why doesn't the Lunais try to go to more than 2 other time periods once she has the ability to go to anytime she wants, and why are there choices between endings if you're able to do basically anything you want since... YOU HAVE TIME TRAVEL! The endgame feels rushed, The sandman is a stupid villain that only shows up so we can have a bit more game (why doesn't he use any time powers against us, and why do our time powers work against him????), and why don't we encounter any good lunais people besides the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ librarian?

The gameplay is a lot better, but it has a few major problems- the combination of rare drops, quests reliant on those drops, and levels meant that I could 2HKO the final boss' first two phases, which is just really stupid. I wasn't even trying to grind, I just wanted some items to show up. Speedrun mode fixes these problems but it's hidden and disables your achievements, and nightmare mode lvl 1 is excellent but doesn't fix your orbs being busted, doesn't offer enough changes to gameplay, and is locked behind a second playthrough or NG+. If not for these things, this would probably be one of the best metroidvanias, at least gameplay wise, I've ever played. Instead, I feel like Iconclasts was more fulfilling gameplay wise (and everybody plays that for the story)

They clearly polished the gameplay for the most part over the length of time the game was in development, but the story feels rushed.



TLDR: The story has problems, but lgbt representation and possible political agenda is not the issue here.

[WereChicken]

Fair assessment and thanks for the civil reply.

I'd say an all LGBTQ main cats without explanation feels more agenda pushing than an all straight cast because a group consisting of random people is far more likely to be all straight than all LGBTQ, to put it basically. Don't get me wrong, if there's scope to explore relationships in the game, say an RPG then I do feel there should be representation, but this feels incredibly forced.

I just mean, it feels a bit suspect when EVERY good character is LGBTQ and the only straight characters are villains, it kind of colours the message you're sending.

I don't really get an anti-fascist vibe so much as an extremely anti-meritocracy vibe, as in: These people only value 'productive' people (In this case those with strong auras) and treat anyone who isn't 'productive' like trash. They keep referring to fascism, but fascism is fundamentally opposed the idea of a meritocracy, for example under a fascist regime I highly doubt the queen would have been allowed to rise up the ranks as she did from being born in a ghetto.

I wish more people would be able to actually debate this game and are willing to criticise it, like you did. Rather than just mindlessly scream homophobe like the people before you, who disagreed.

[WereChicken]

Just to add, I think the easyness is more a result of a bit too many anti-frustration measures, than actual bad design, but I do think the universe they built up pretty much demanded a wider stage than they set.

Also if any of the devs are reading this: I dont hate the game because of the writing, I feel let down because it felt like going to a restaurant, having an amazing starter, then breadsticks then told that's your lot.

If you make the game longer you'd have more time to flesh out your story and you could add extra replay ability stuff like branching storylines (I mean.... come on! Why was that not in there!? It would have really exploited the unique time mechanics and even allowed you to introduce the lion and give him some context by having him allow you to jump between the alternate timelines if you didn't want players to have to choose)